This article originally ran here at We Are Movie Geeks in January of 2010 but with everyone gearing up for Tim Burton’s hotly-anticipated update opening May 11th, we’re re-posting and keeping our fingers crossed that this excellent 1971 feature film, based on the show, gets a long-deserved DVD release.

Dark Shadows, the gothic daytime drama that premiered on the ABC Television network in 1966, was distinguished from other soap operas by it’s presence of vampires, werewolves, witches, and ghosts. The show was a cult phenomenon and there were soon Dark Shadows board games, jigsaw puzzles, model kits, and other merchandise aimed at kids, even though it was adult women and college students who comprised it’s core audience. The breakout star of Dark Shadows was Canadian actor Jonathan Frid who played Barnabas Collins, the 200-year-old vampire and heir to the Collingswood estate (where the show took place) constantly in search of fresh blood and pining for his lost love, Josette. In 1970 Dan Curtis, the show’s creator and producer, teamed up with MGM to make a theatrical feature spun from the show, and the result was HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS. It was a huge success, spawning a sequel, NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS, and they remain the only motion pictures ever based on a daytime soap opera, but neither is currently available on DVD (though thanks to Tim Burton, they probably will be soon).

HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS opens with Barnabas Collins being released from his crypt by a caretaker (John Karlen) who’s looking for buried family treasure. Posing as a long-lost British cousin, Barnabas attempts to gain the confidence of the Stoddard family, who are the currently living on the Collinswood estate, but his mysterious reappearance after many years raises questions in the minds of family confidantes Dr. Julia Hoffman (Grayson Hall) and Prof. Stokes (Thayer David). The matriarch of the family, Elizabeth Stoddard (Joan Bennett) and her brother Roger Collins (Louis Edmonds) welcomeBarnabas and immediately install him in the mansion which, in fact, is his original home. Soon a series of unexplained attacks on acquaintances of the Stoddards begin to suggest a vampire is in their midst. Carolyn Stoddard (Nancy Barrett) is the first victim to fall under Barnabas’s hypnotic spell but the true object of his desire is Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott), a governess who is the spitting image of his long-lost love, Josette. Dr. Hoffman suspects Barnabas is a vampire but falls under his spell and tries to find a medical cure for him through a series of injections. More of the cast becomes blood-suckers, Barnabas suddenly ages 200 years (make-up courtesy of Dick Smith), and it’s soon up to one man with a crossbow to save the day.

A smart move by Dan Curtis was to give HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS an accessible vampire story that viewers unfamiliar with four years of TV plot lines could easily follow and enjoy. Its plot was sort of a condensed version of the show but, despite the same cast and music, HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS could not have been more stylistically dissimilar. Where the black-and-white show (many later episodes were videotaped in color but most ABC affiliate stations did not have the capability to play video tape, so B&W Kinescope copies were aired instead) was static and stagebound, the movie was fast-paced with fluid camerawork, dynamic direction, and lavish scope. It’s a striking, entertaining film and the suspense never lags. Barnabas’ entrance, shot from his point-of-view, is artful and unsettling and, unlike the show, the vampire violence and gore flow quite freely even though it was rated GP (lots of rough stuff was given that rating in those days – I guess you had to include nudity to get an R in 1970). It’s gothic ambiance is more cinematic than the show thanks to a healthy budget and it plays like a worthy 70′s vampire and is no worse than the Blacula or Count Yorga films from that period. The show was famous for putting cobwebs in the foreground and focusing in and out of them to hide the scant trappings and the film pays playful homage to this technique at one point. Where the series was shot entirely on meager studio sets, HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS was handsomely photographed at a Revolutionary War-era estate in Tarrytown, New York which provides a genuinely creepy atmosphere.

The cast of HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS all reprise their roles from TV, but it’s Jonathan Frid’s show all the way. Barnabas Collins had a sympathetic side on TV but in the movie he’s all evil, savagely biting and strangling his victims, some his own relatives. But Barnabas was Frid’s only well-known role. After Dark Shadows TV run ended, Frid stayed in Hollywood just long enough to star in Oliver Stone’s directorial debut SEIZURE in 1974 as a writer haunted by his demons (manifested by Martine Beswick and Herve Villachaize!). Frid’s experience with SEIZURE was so unpleasant (though the movie has aged interestingly), he went back to Canada to focus on stage work and never acted in front of the camera again. Now 86, Frid is still in good health and occasionally makes appearances at Dark Shadows conventions. Grayson Hall (who played a completely different character in the sequel), Kathryn Leigh Scott, Nancy Barrett (sexy in her flowing white gown), Roger Davis, and John Karlen were all from the show but none had particularly notable careers post-Dark Shadows (except Karlen who had the male lead in DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS in 1974, a fantastic European vampire movie). Joan Bennett had been a major golden age movie star acting in everything from LITTLE WOMEN in 1933 to FATHER OF THE BRIDE in 1950. She retired from show biz in the 1950′s but was lured out of retirement to co-star in the Dark Shadows TV show. Her presence as Elizabeth Stoddard gave HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS some old-school Hollywood class. Dan Curtis went on to produce and direct some of the most memorable made-for-TV horror movies of the 1970′s including DRACULA (1973 with Jack Palance), THE NORLISS TAPES (1973), SCREAM OF THE WOLF (1974) and who can forget his TRILOGY OF TERROR from 1975 with Karen Black battling the infamous Zuni Fetish doll equipped with razor sharp teeth and a spear?! Curtis also created the Night Stalker TV series in 1974 starring Darren McGavin and based on his TV movies THE NIGHT STALKER (1972) and THE NIGHT STRANGLER (1974).

Barnabas did not return for the big-screen sequel NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS in 1972. A pre-Charlie’s Angels Kate Jackson starred in the follow-up which focused on Quentin Collins, a werewolf in the show, but who never sprouts hair or fangs in the dull second film which focused on ghosts and witches and wasn’t nearly as financially successful as HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS. The 30 minute Dark Shadows TV show originally aired at 3:00 pm and I can remember, as a monster-obsessed child, bolting from my grade school desk daily when the dismissal bell rang at 3:20, and dashing home to catch the show’s last five minutes. This was long before the days of videotaping shows and there was always some cool cliffhanger monster action in the final moments of Dark Shadows. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that the first 25 minutes was actually talky and dull (a huge amount of the 1,225 episodes have been released on VHS and DVD over the years. Try watching one). Dark Shadows TV run ended in 1971 but Curtis briefly revived it 20 years later with British actor Ben Cross as Barnabas and cult horror icon Barbara Steele as Dr. Hoffman. Both HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS and NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS were released by MGM in the mid-80′s in full-frame VHS, but are both long out-of-print. Dark Shadows still has it’s following and those fans should be excited at the news that director Tim Burton, a lifelong fan himself, will be bringing Dark Shadows back to life on the big screen May 11th with Johnny Depp as Barnabas. This is fantastic news as Burton’s sensibilities and style are perfect for the project and I can’t see MGM resisting the opportunity to cash in and finally release HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS on DVD.

Any film featuring either Christopher Lee or Boris Karloff is an instant must-see for� horror fans. The two terror titans joined forces the first time in 1958′s CORRIDORS OF BLOOD, a grimy graverobber/mad doctor opus that took place in 19th century England. Ten years later came their second and final collaboration, CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT (aka CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR or simply THE CRIMSON CULT) and this time cult siren Barbara Steele, the reigning queen of horror, joined them as well. With this type of fright wattage, you’d expect CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT to be some sort of classic much-discussed by monster kids just for the cast alone (it’s even got Michael Gough!), but that’s not the case with this strange but confused brew of devil-worshipping, witches, creepy old mansions with secret passageways torture devices, and ritual sacrifices. It’s considered to be a missed opportunity and a waste of an amazing cast but the film� has its moments and just the sight of Barbara Steele with her green skin, blood-red lipstick, and rams horns headdress surrounded by burly half-naked guys in leather, whips and goats masks makes it worth seeking out but it’s NOT available of DVD.

CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT stars Mark Eden as Robert Manning, an antiques dealer who has just received a selection of priceless rare items from his brother, Peter, after he visited an old mansion known as Claxted Lodge. However, Peter hasn’t been in contact for days, and Robert grows suspicious when the note that came with the rarities simply says that Peter hasn’t been feeling well. Manning makes up his mind to get to the source of this mystery and heads off to the village of Greymarsh where the mansion is situated. He asks a service station attendant about the village and is told they are holding a festival celebrating a witch burning from centuries before. Intrigued, Manning arrives at the mansion and is at first welcomed by its residents including witchcraft authority Professor John Marshe (Karloff), but he gradually senses something strange and sinister has happened to his brother there. After suffering from vivid nightmares, he realizes that he’s been put under a curse and finds that the owner (Lee) is taking revenge against the Manning family on behalf of a witch ancestor, Lavinia (Steele), who was burned at the stake 300 years earlier.

Audiences attracted to CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT by the top billing of Karloff and Lee, hoping that it would be a classic horror worthy of their pairing were most likely disappointed. It’s a bloodless affair that doesn’t actually thrill, scare, mystify or really even engage all that much. CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT was produced by Tigon Pictures whose� output around this time included WITCHFINDER GENERAL and BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW. It’s not in the same league as those classics mostly because of its muddled, confused script that director Vernon Sewell never gets a grip on. It’s dated into an interesting curio though, and has enough going for it to make it worth seeking out. The story has (uncredited) similarities to HP Lovecraft’s Dream in the Witch House and shares some elements with THE DUNWICH HORROR, a legitimate Lovecraft adaption made two years later. Both films attempted to update Lovecraft with setpieces inspired by the drug culture of the late ’60s. In fact, drugs seem to be a theme in CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT without ever actually making an appearance. The text “…and drugs of this group can produce the most complex hallucinations and under their influence it is possible by hypnosis to induce the subject to perform actions he would not normally commit” (Extract from medical journal) is superimposed at the beginning over a tripping, swirling abstraction, but this seems to be tacked on to cash in on the then-trendy drug movie craze (this was distributed by American International after all), but the rest of the movie doesn’t deal with drugs at all despite some psychedelic hallucinations and swinging-sixties art-scene party sequences. Cinematographer Johnny Coquillon did an outstanding job of with his garish but memorable use of colored gels and filters, well-utilizing the interiors of the atmospheric Grims Dyke Hotel outside of London (THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE was filmed there in 1969 as were parts of the 1970 Vincent Price shocker CRY OF THE BANSHEE as well as episodes of The Saint and The Avengers).

If nothing else, CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT is worthy of rediscovery because of its cast. Though promoted as “the Master of Evil in his Last and Most Shocking Role”, Karloff would actually appear in three more films. While filming CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT on cold sets in London, the wheelchair-bound Karloff developed pneumonia in his remaining lung (the other had developed cancer and been removed). After shooting, Karloff flew back to his home in Los Angeles where the ailing actor filmed scenes for his final films. CAULDRON OF BLOOD, ISLE OF THE SNAKE PEOPLE, and THE INCREDIBLE INVASION were low-budget crapfests filmed in Mexico in 1968 as co-productions between Columbia Pictures and Mexico’s Azteca Films. Ever the pro, the dying Karloff managed to squeeze out some scenes for director Jack Hill from his wheelchair that were edited into these films, which were of course marketed as ‘starring’ the legend and distributed by an outfit called Horror International. Karloff died February 2nd 1969 at age 81. In retrospect, knowing that filming CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT hastened the death of the horror king gives it an unpleasant coda. Christopher Lee was incredibly prolific at this point in his career (he made 19 films between 1968 and 1970), and could play this type of disciplinarian role in his sleep but manages to give a commanding performance with limited screen time. Barbara Steele is, as usual, both lovely and creepy but her role is small, most likely shot in a single day. The set sh’e in looks like a cheap but weird ’60s S&M porn film and and these trippy scenes are the most memorable in the film. CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT was made right after the string of wonderful Gothic horrors that she starred in, filmed mostly in Italy, and she wouldn’t appear in another horror film for six more years until David Cronenberg tapped her strange allure for THEY CAME FROM WITHIN (aka SHIVERS) in 1975. Michael Gough plays the type of manservant he so excelled at and the stunning Virginia Wetherell, best remembered as the topless stage actress Malcolm McDowell couldn’t put his hands on in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, has a small role as Lavinia’s descendant. The central character Robert Manning is blandly played by Mark Eden, an actor who kept busy in British television but who had few other notable screen roles. Director Sewell’s other horror credits include the dull Peter Cushing moth-woman shocker BLOOD BEAST TERROR (1968) and the underrated 1970 film of BURKE AND HARE.

CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT played on American television some in the ’70s but sort of vanished. It never had a VHS release in this country but popped up on an Image Entertainment laserdisc (under its CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR title) paired with the 1963 Corman/Price film HAUNTED PALACE, also based on Lovecraft. While not a great film, CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT is not without interest and is worthy of a DVD release. I will be screening a 9 minute condensed version of CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT on Super-8 sound film on the evening of October 4th at The Way Out Club (2525 Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis) as part of my monthly SUPER-8 MOVIE MADNESS show. This digest version has superb color and will no doubt inspire viewers to attempt to track down this forgotten film.

This article originally ran here at We Are Movie Geeks in October 2009. I’m re-posting it to help promote Super-8 LEE MARVIN Movie Madness September 6th at The Way Out Club here in St. Louis.

Only in the 1970�s could Hollywood have turned its attention to the subject of racism in the deep south and come up with something so jaw-dropping in it�s political incorrectness as THE KLANSMAN. On the surface the 1974 film is a serious depiction of the bigotry and the racial confrontations that tear apart an Alabama town in the 1960�s, but watching it today THE KLANSMAN comes off at times serious, laughable, meanspirited, sleazy, and racist. I�m sure the movie wasn’t meant to be racist, but it is filled with characters mouthing so many racist beliefs and committing so many racist crimes that the movie seems to gloat gleefully in its outrageous depiction of bigotry and delivers one ham-fisted, hypocritical message. �THE KLANSMAN really has to be seen to be believed but you can�t, because it�s NOT available on DVD!

THE KLANSMAN, from a novel by William Bradford Huie, is set in the years right after the Voting Rights Act has been enacted and tells the story of racial tensions in a small southern Alabama town that has just been rocked by tragedy: a young white woman (Linda Evans) has been raped and beaten. The local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan immediately declares that the attacker had to have been a black man so they find an innocent one, castrate and kill him, then frame his revolution-minded friend Garth (O.J. Simpson) for that murder. The sheriff (Lee Marvin), though a Klan member himself, doubts Garth�s guilt and releases him. Garth dons a KKK robe and starts ambushing and gunning down the white-sheeted rednecks who killed his buddy. Richard Burton plays the wealthy local eccentric who supports the black community and the film climaxes on his farm with a bloody showdown when the Sheriff teams up with Garth against an army of coneheads.

THE KLANSMAN� moves at an easy-to-watch pace and is filled with scenes of extreme cruelty, violence and rape. It�s sheer exploitation and doesn�t try to make any astute moral statements condemning racial prejudice. While THE KLANSMAN is no IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, it isn�t the only �Klansploitation� movie from this period. There was the BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH (1976) in which a group of black Vietnam vets battle the Klan and Ted V. Mikel�s THE BLACK KLANSMAN (1969) where a black man passes as a Klansman to seek revenge for his daughter�s death. THE KLANSMAN� was produced by Paramount with an all-star cast but it played for years at drive-ins (where I first saw it in 1977) and is considered lowbrow grindhouse fare. In retrospect THE KLANSMAN is more laughable than offensive and there are a lot of memorably stupefying moments: the Klan funeral interrupted by sniper fire, a repugnant scene of a black virgin (Lola Folana) being raped and then her blood being smeared on the rapist�s face, and a hilariously inept karate fight between Burton and an evil deputy with the catchy name of Butt Cut Cates (Cameron Mitchell). Then there�s the spectacle of watching O.J. Simpson on a killing spree offing white people some twenty years before he did so in real life! In one staggering scene he makes an escape while hiding in the backseat of a Ford Bronco!!

Well cast as the lead in THE KLANSMAN, Lee Marvin is solid as a man knows that racism is wrong but tolerates it in order to keep order in his town. Cameron Mitchell oozes hate as the film�s nasty central villain and O.J. Simpson is cool as the hero. But it�s Richard Burton�s performance, one of the worst of his career, that is the most noteworthy. Clearly drunk throughout, his shaky southern accent becomes British as the film progresses and his character�s gimpy leg switches from right to left. Legend is that both Marvin and Burton were so tanked on the set that neither remembers making the film. THE KLANSMAN (I don’t know why the title is singular) was originally a project for director Sam Fuller but he reportedly stormed off the set in a script dispute. Fuller receives a writing credit and would return to the issue of racial violence with his film WHITE DOG in 1980. Brit helmer Terence Young, best known for directing three Connery 007 films (DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, and THUNDERBALL) stepped in and did a good job with the action scenes.

THE KLANSMAN has had a tough home video history. Apparently the title fell into the public domain at some point and was released on cheap VHS labels sometimes retitled KKK or THE BURNING CROSS. Problem is, the print used on all U.S. releases was a heavily-edited TV print that has almost ten minutes of the potent violence excised. The word �damn� is cut out but the �N-word� is uttered about three dozen times! Netflix actually carries a DVD-R of THE KLANSMAN but it�s ripped from this edited print and the washed-out fuzzy image quality is atrocious (I�m surprised to see DVD-Rs on Netflix. They also carry ANDY WARHOL�S BAD and Sam Peckinpah�s CONVOY).

I will be screening an 18 minute condensed version of THE KLANSMAN on Super-8 sound film on the evening of September 6^th at The Way Out club as part of Super-8 LEE MARVIN Movie Madness. This digest version of THE KLANSMAN actually has better color and more violence than the DVD! The other Lee Marvin movies I�ll be screening (in condensed form) that night are: EMPEROR OF THE NORTH, THE PROFESSIONALS, THE WILD ONE, CAT BALLOU, and THE DIRTY DOZEN. I�ll also be screening a 16mm print of an episode of M-Squad, the hard-boiled detective series that Marvin starred in in the late �50�s. Stop by the Way Out (2525 Jefferson Ave. in south St. Louis) on the 6^th and help cheer on O.J.!

Article by Dana Jung

DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE (1965) was a wild and funny send-up of beach movies, James Bond spy films, and horror movie cliches. It boasted Frankie Avalon, Dwayne Hickman (TVs DOBIE GILLIS), and the beautiful Susan Hart as a robot who speaks in a variety of foreign accents. The great Vincent Price also stars as the mad scientist/evil supervillain of the title, a role he would reprise in both a television musical special promoting the film, THE WILD WEIRD WORLD OF DR. GOLDFOOT (which also included Hart), and the Italian-made sequel DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS (1966), directed by giallo and horror meistro Mario Bava. And while BIKINI MACHINE and WILD WEIRD WORLD have both been released on DVD (but are currently out-of-print), the GIRL BOMBS sequel still has yet to find a home on DVD.

DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS is interesting in both its similarities and differences with BIKINI MACHINE. Like BIKINI MACHINE, its origins were much different than the final product. (According to Price, BIKINI MACHINE had started out as a musical, and even commissioned some original songs. What is left of these can probably be heard in WILD WEIRD WORLD, which is full of singing actors.) GIRL BOMBS began as a comedy vehicle for a popular Italian comedy team, Franco & Ciccio. It was more of a straight spy spoof in that version, without all the outlandish mad scientist and world domination storylines. After the drive-in success of BIKINI MACHINE, the producers at AIP probably thought this was a perfect way to make a quick sequel at a greatly reduced cost. So GIRL BOMBS is essentially an expanded, re-edited version of the Italian comedy, but the biggest difference is the addition of Vincent Price as Dr. Goldfoot. Price seems to be having just as much fun on GIRL BOMBS as he did on BIKINI MACHINE, sometimes breaking the “fourth wall” and speaking directly into the camera. Attired in a variety of cool and colorful dinner jackets, Price makes the film come alive when he is onscreen, laughing his evil laugh and relishing the ineptitude of all those around him.

The remaining characters don’t fare as well for the most part. Then-teen-idol Fabian has replaced Frankie Avalon as the earnest but dull apprentice spy. Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia are kind of an Italian Abbott and Costello, with one playing the straight man and the other mugging his rubbery face throughout the film. Unfortunately, they are not nearly as funny as Abbott and Costello (maybe something got lost in translation?), especially considering their amount of screen time. The wonderful Susan Hart’s role is more than amply filled by the luscious – and young– Laura Antonelli, who gets to play both a robot and a human. She not only shows a flair for comedy (her weird sexy robot dance is a must-see) but also a sultry seductiveness that later made her the reigning foreign sex symbol of the 1970s. Also missing is Dr. Goldfoot’s assistant Igor, replaced in GIRL BOMBS by an Asian sidekick named ‘Hardjob’� (insert your own joke here).

Director Bava (who allegedly took this project only to fulfill a contract obligation) has also left out the funny cameos from the first film, the nifty title song by The Supremes, the horror set pieces like THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, and the Playboy Playmates playing the Girl Bombs – though, to be fair, the Italian starlets here fill the gold bikinis nicely. There is not even much of Bava’s usual visual flair or style on display. Instead, there are whole scenes lifted directly from other films (a pond full of piranha from James Bond, Keystone Cops complete with dialogue cards, AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, and others), plus a foot chase through an amusement park that does not compare well with BIKINI MACHINE’S climactic car chase through the streets of San Fransisco. However, there are a few signature touches of Bava’s sense of absurdity: when a zombified robot menaces the hero and heroine with an axe, and the piranha scene has a certain morbid humor to it. And the air of surrealism comes to fruition in the action-filled climax, as a hot air balloon overtakes a B-52 bomber in a DR. STRANGELOVE-inspired sequence.

It’s a shame that two great horror icons such as Price and Bava could not have collaborated on a more worthy (and scary) project. But taken for what it is, DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS is a testament to the drawing power of star Vincent Price, and of the cinematic frivolity of its time period.
At least one film series (AUSTIN POWERS) owes a great debt to the two DR. GOLDFOOT movies, and they are quite enjoyable to watch today. It’s just too bad that DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS has to be viewed on its 1990s VHS release, and not on DVD.

As a movie producer, Albert Zugsmith was a major player in Hollywood in the 40′s and 50′s working alongside his friend Howard Hughes for RKO, then moving to Universal where his credits included THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) and Orson Welle’s TOUCH OF EVIL (1958). His less stellar directorial efforts from later in his career were sheer exploitation madness with such gems as SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960 – with Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, and Vampira!), PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM AND EVE (also 1960 with Van Doren, Weld, and June Wilkinson!) and FANNY HILL which he co-directed with Russ Meyer in Germany in 1964 (sensing a pattern here?). CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER (1962) was his most unusual and artful film as director, a tawdry mix of Asian stereotypes and sleaze that no one should mistake for great art -but one that makes for fascinating viewing. It’s a real oddity; meditative, eerie, and dreamlike with a great haunted central performance by Vincent Price, but it is a movie that is NOT available on DVD.

The story in CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER has little to do with the same-titled 18th-century autobiography by British author and intellectual Thomas De Quincey (1785-1849) which chronicled the effects his opium and alcohol addictions had on his life. De Quincey’s dark philosophical meditations influenced many tormented writers, most notably Edgar Allen Poe. The film version tells of a black-clad 19th-century adventurer named Gilbert De Quincey (Vincent Price) who’s involved in a San Francisco tong war while aiding runaway oriental slave girls with the help of a female Asian midget. It all takes place in a surreal realm of narrow sewers, sliding doors and secret passages that lead to opium dens and hidden rooms sporting bamboo cages inhabited by captive women. It’s a very, very strange and eccentric film for 1962.
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM opens on the foggy coast near San Francisco. The crew of a Chinese junket unload from a net their human cargo; kidnapped Asian women brought to America to be sold at a slave auction. A young girl named Lotus (June Kim) escapes and is almost caught again, but saved by a white horse that knocks one of the kidnappers off a cliff. Soon the rest of the girls appear to be rescued by another group, but they have equally nefarious plans. When De Quincey arrives in Chinatown, he quickly finds himself in the middle of a viscous Tong war between the two rival cabals. The cruel Ruby Low (Linda Ho) organizes the slave auctions but is at war with a more progressive Chinese clan whose leader has recently been murdered in a battle. Low is convinced De Quinecy is on her side because of his serpent tattoo, but his true alliances may only lie in his drug-addled mind. Like a turn of the century Travis Bickle, De Quinecy becomes obsessed with saving Lotus from a life of prostitution but his heroics may all be a pipe dream. The plot doesn’t make much sense, but that hardly matters as the parade of odd images and odder characters gives CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM a trippy momentum which transcends convention. John Carpenter was a fan of the film and his BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA presents a similar cockeyed view of Chinatown and he gave June Kim a small role in that film as homage.

Zugsmith directs CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER as if he wanted the film to physically resemble a drug experience, and its logic-challenged action, fortune-cookie dialog (“Man’s view of evil is like water boiling in box”), and odd pacing really are suggestive of an opium-induced trip. Despite the title there’s only one scene actually involving opium. It’s when De Quinecy takes some in order to get close to the women trafficking ring, and he has a particularly bugged-out hallucination scene climaxing in a silent, drowsy, slo-mo chase across rooftops. Zugsmith’s film illustrates the darkest elements of humanity where women are caged, starved, and doped-up like lab rats. De Quincey is a reluctant hero whose solution for dealing with the danger is to cloud his mind with drugs at every opportunity. Except for the beach prologue, Vincent Price is at center stage at all times and the film succeeds because of his performance. Price was often accused of overacting, but his frantic scenery-chewing was usually the correct style for the material he was in. He’s not as hammy in CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER as in other films, but he’s far from low-key either. Whether spouting bemused philosophy while being washed down a sewer or climbing the sides of walls and getting into fitsfights (this was definitely one of Price’s most athletic roles), he’s perfectly in tune with what Zugsmith seemed to be going for here and the film absolutely would not have worked with any other actor in the role. The pressbook for CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER had a classic ballyhoo bad idea:

�Oriental Slave Girls in Bamboo Cages � a sure stopper for Lobby or Store window!…If you cannot obtain bamboo, have your artist simulate the bamboo shoots on beaver board. If an Oriental girl is not available, have a white girl made up to look like one. She is to occupy the cage during peak show hours!�

CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER is a little-known classic, a genuinely singular and psychedelic affair that deserves major cult status and it’s not even available on DVD.

Vincent Price was born in St. Louis May 27th, 1911 so our city will be hosting Vincentennial, the Vincent Price 100th Birthday Celebration here this May to honor a favorite son and its most iconic movie star. Vincentennial consists of two exhibits, two stage productions, two publications, and a comprehensive 10-day long film festival presented by Cinema St. Louis to be kicked off by Roger Corman and capped with a presentation by Victoria Price, author of Vincent Price, a Daughter’s Biography. Visit www.vincentennial.com for details or visit the Vincentennial facebook page HERE, or always check here at We Are Movie geels.com for all the latest on Vincentennial. CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER is not one of the films that will be showing at the film fest (unfortunately), but is well worth tracking down.

Article by Dana Jung

When I was a kid, in between wanting to be Spider-Man and serving aboard the starship Enterprise, I wanted to join the Khyber Rifles.� All my friends wanted to join, too. We had seen this really cool movie on the late show called KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, and it was full of adventure, romance, and exotic locales.� It had one of Hollywood’s most versatile and underrated directors in Henry King, a stirring musical score by the great Bernard Herrmann, plus one of the great matinee idol action stars, Tyrone Power. Unfortunately, none of us grew up to be Ty Power, and our quest went unfulfilled.� But now, as an adult, I find myself occasionally wanting to relive those exciting scenes of derring-do, which is difficult, since KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES is not available on DVD.

Released in 1953 by 20^th Century Fox, KHYBER RIFLES is based on a best-selling book by British author Talbot Mundy.� Mundy popularized a more modern and rugged version of the historical romance adventure story, and whether it was Vikings, Roman warriors, or the British India he was most familiar with, his exciting style influenced everyone from Robert E. Howard (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) to Robert E. Heinlein (STARSHIP TROOPERS).� Director King and his screenwriters, however, basically jettisoned the bulk of Mundy’s plot, but kept the main character and reworked the story into a sort of Middle Eastern FORT APACHE.� Captain Alan King (Power) is a half-caste British officer who must not only deal with the prejudice of his fellow officers, but the guilt he sometimes feels for the British rule of the indigenous Indian people.� Themes of racism run throughout KHYBER RIFLES, especially in the first half of the film, as the characters and plot elements are introduced.� As a British officer complains about the stagnant heat, the film cuts briefly to a servant continuously pulling the rope that operates an overhead fan.� When Capt. King is not invited to the Queen’s birthday celebration, the outraged daughter (Terry Moore) of the Commanding Officer (Michael Rennie) confronts her father with, “You mean he’s allowed to die for the Queen, but her birthday party is out-of bounds!”.� However, King never allows the movie to become heavy-handed or preachy, as he emphasizes the ominous threat of revolution and war, and lets the love story subplot unfold in several beautifully shot set pieces.� But the action enthusiast will be satisfied by the film’s conclusion, as King leads his Khyber Rifles on a daring nighttime raid of the enemy camp.

The comparison to Ford’s FORT APACHE is an apt one.� Both films are set at an isolated outpost on the frontier; both have stern commanding officers with strong-willed daughters; both portray the daily lives of the cavalry soldier.

But KHYBER RIFLES may be the more successful film at weaving its themes of bigotry, and in portraying the romantic aspects of the story.� And it is definitely superior to FORT APACHE in one respect – KHYBER RIFLES was shot in CinemaScope!� And it has bagpipes!� The veteran director King brought us many, many enjoyable films, including several with Power (another favorite, THE BLACK SWAN, is available on DVD).

Power’s performance shows why he was such a great action adventure star for over 20 years in Hollywood. In KHYBER RIFLES, he is every bit the British officer.� Every salute is sharp and crisply done, his posture perfect.

Details like these, plus his restrained and stoic delivery, show a great commitment to the part.� Captain King is a complex man, but sees his role as the simple one of the British officer.� When asked if he minds the sometimes prejudiced attitude towards him, he replies, �I mind, but I hope for the best.� The world’s still young.”

Michael Rennie again delivers a solid and subtle performance, of a man torn amongst his duty to his country, his parental duty to his daughter, and his duty to his own conscience.� Terry Moore has lived a fairly picturesque life, even by Hollywood standards.� A former child actress, she became a contract player who starred opposite just about every major male star, from John Wayne to Cary Grant.� Oscar-nominated (COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA), cult film star (MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, TV’s BATMAN – she played Venus), much-married with children, Moore’s career never achieved that high level of stardom, and she drifted into television roles and low-budget features.� In the 1970′s, she regained some notoriety by claiming to be secretly married to Howard Hughes.� She ended up accepting a settlement, then posed nude for Playboy Magazine.� In KHYBER RIFLES, her performance is the heart and moral center of the picture. She decries the bigotry she witnesses as �stupid and hateful”� but has a compassionate insight into human nature. �Your mother and father must have been very much in love”� she tells Captain King on his mixed parentage, �to stand together against a world.”

Incidentally, the Khyber Rifles Frontier Corps actually existed, and may still exist today (they’ve been disbanded a few times).� The character of Captain King was loosely based on a real person, Sir Robert Warburton, who was himself the half-caste child of a British artillery soldier and an Afghan princess.� He commanded the Khyber Rifles for several decades in the 1800′s.� If you want to learn more about the Khyber Rifles, you’ll need to check your local library or the internet.� But if you want to see KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, you’ll have to catch it on the late, late show as I did as a kid, because it was never released in this country on video or DVD.

Article by Dana Jung

The 1970s was a significant decade in the history of American cinema. The sometimes wild experimentation of the avant garde movement of the 1960s had pretty much disappeared by the mid 70s. The decade gave birth to the adult film industry (DEEP THROAT), the modern slasher film (the one-two punch of HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH), and the Hollywood blockbuster (JAWS and later STAR WARS). The exploitation film subgenre (blaxploitation, sexploitation, etc.) peaked and gave way to teen comedies and horror films. The Western was all but dead. However, in 1976 American International Pictures released a wonderfully offbeat and satisfying Western comedy into this rapidly changing marketplace, THE GREAT SCOUT AND CATHOUSE THURSDAY, which regrettably is NOT available on DVD.

Sam Longwood (the great Lee Marvin) is the ‘great scout’� of the title, a grizzled and legendary Indian fighter whose time has come and gone. The turn of the century has brought not only new technology such as the horseless carriage, but also a certain mentality of greed and overblown spectacle that will set the tone for the rest of the century. Seeking payback from a former partner (Robert Culp) for an old debt, Longwood is joined on his quest by his cohorts Joe Knox (Oliver Reed), a somewhat bitter but amiable half-breed (whose Native American name is Knock-Down-Soldiers-With-A-Stick), and Billy (Strother Martin), a selfish but loyal whiner. Along the way, this motley band is joined by Thursday (Kay Lenz), a young prostitute so-named because, according to the lustful Billy, a man should have a different girl for every day of the week.

The movie is always interesting, jumping from plotline to plotline with a speed that matches the pace of the comedy or the drama at hand. Beginning as an Old West tale of revenge, then sidestepping into bawdy slapstick, and ending as a caper film, the movie is at heart a simple romance that exemplifies the story’s themes of the old guard meeting the new age.

Director Don Taylor was a solid veteran of TV and movies who distinguished himself on occasion (the underrated Brando version of THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU and ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES, perhaps the best in that series). Writer Richard Shapiro, also a TV veteran, later became known for his work on the primetime soaps DYNASTY and THE COLBYS and also penned at least one certified cult classic, the Linda Blair telefilm SARAH T: PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGE ALCOHOLIC. GREAT SCOUT is full of Shapiro’s funny one-liners, such as, “Why don’t you give your mouth the rest of the day off?” But much of the humor comes from his well-wrought characters.

Lee Marvin here gives one of the best performances of his career, echoing not only the burned out cowboy for which he won his Oscar in CAT BALLOU, but also the cynical gunslinger in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE. Seeing Marvin so energetically poke fun at his own tough-guy image, it;s a shame Marvin didn;t make more comedies. In many ways, the movie is an affectionate ode to a bygone era of tough, individualistic trailblazers personified by actors such as Marvin and Oliver Reed, and the characters they played. The new breed of ‘gentlemen’� is contrasted early in the film as Longwood, in his dusty travel clothes and ten-gallon hat, enters a saloon full of three-piece suits and bowler hats. Later, in perhaps the most sadly beautiful scene in the film, Longwood throws a scrapbook containing his various exploits into a fire and watches it burn, as a train whistle echoes in the distance, signaling the approach of the modern age. Reed and Martin are also a joy to watch, as each makes the most of their flamboyant characters. Culp and the wonderful Elizabeth Ashley, as Longwood;s foul-mouthed old flame, are enjoyable as basically the villains of the piece. But the film belongs to Marvin and the endearing Kay Lenz as Thursday. With her waiflike appearance and unconventionally pretty face, Lenz made a career of playing vulnerable but determined women. Beginning in television as a child actress, Lenz successfully alternated between TV work and exploitation films throughout the 1970s. Her long resume (she is still in demand and working today) includes the landmark miniseries RICH MAN, POOR MAN as well as the cult films MOVING VIOLATION, WHITE LINE FEVER, and the amazing STRIPPED TO KILL. In 1992 she gave a lovely performance in the little seen but acclaimed John Mellencamp drama FALLING FROM GRACE. She also starred in the original telefilm THE INITIATION OF SARAH (which has been remade at least twice), and was directed by Clint Eastwood (opposite William Holden) in BREEZY. In GREAT SCOUT, her relationship with Marvin’s Sam Longwood seems touching and real, and is the heart of the movie.

American International had a reputation for releasing quickie ripoffs of big studio films, and GREAT SCOUT came out a few years after Mel Brooks’ BLAZING SADDLES. But this raucous and touching comedy succeeds on levels other than big laughs, and though it did see a release in the short-lived Selectavision Video Disc format and Vestron Video VHS in the 1980s, THE GREAT SCOUT AND CATHOUSE THURSDAY deserves to be released on DVD.

Article by Dana Jung

In 1959 director Fritz Lang (METROPOLIS, M) released one of his last works, a two-part film known as THE INDIAN EPIC. The films (THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR and its sequel THE INDIAN TOMB, both available on DVD but currently out of print) were part adventure and part travelogue. Today, these films are remembered (if at all) for two things: their incredible location photography, and the erotic dances of star Debra Paget. The scenes with a barely-clad Paget writhing seductively were considered so sexy at the time that the films received a write-up in Playboy magazine. But just five years earlier, as a 20th Century Fox contract player, Paget had played basically the same role (complete with dancing!) of an exotic beauty caught up in political turmoil. The film was the 1954 Fox B-picture PRINCESS OF THE NILE, which is sadly NOT available on DVD.

The movie opens with a long scene of Paget dancing. We soon learn that the dance is part of a disguise, because Paget is actually an undercover princess! Her character, Shalimar (love the name), is trying to protect her country from outside political forces in an ongoing power struggle between Egypt, Arabia, and the Turks. The movie follows B-film swashbuckling convention as Paget, playing the beautiful yet prickly heroine, has to deal with a smirking but intelligent villain (Michael Rennie), plus the handsome yet somewhat dull hero (Jeffrey Hunter) and his brave but humorous sidekick (Wally Cassell).

The film benefits greatly from this attractive cast, along with nice Technicolor cinematography, some solid direction, and a literate, fast-paced (and funny) script. Rennie, just a few years after his heroic turn with Gort in DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, is back playing the villain with a quiet menace that he perfected throughout the 1950s and later in television. Hunter, with his incredibly blue eyes, is fine as the hero who isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but is honest and fearless. He realizes the treasure he has discovered in the spritely princess, and Hunter has great chemistry with Paget (which served them well a year later in WHITE FEATHER). Hunter would move on to memorable A-list roles in such films as THE SEARCHERS and THE LONGEST DAY, and he played everything from Jesus (KING OF KINGS) to Captain Pike of the USS Enterprise in the original STAR TREK pilot. Tragically, Hunter died of a brain injury at the age of 42 after an accidental fall in his home.

Debra Paget also flirted with stardom in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, playing opposite some heavyweights such as Anthony Quinn, Cornel Wilde, and even Elvis in his first film LOVE ME TENDER. With her almond eyes and beautiful face, Paget was often typecast in exotic roles as Middle Eastern or Native American maidens, but she is most fondly remembered for her cult film appearances. Not only the aforementioned INDIAN EPIC (which incidentally was edited into one film titled JOURNEY TO THE LOST CITY for American audiences), but also a pair of Vincent Price Poe adaptations, THE HAUNTED PALACE and TALES OF TERROR. After marrying into wealth and to devote time to family, she retired from films just past age 30.

While not a great film by any stretch, PRINCESS OF THE NILE is colorful and entertaining, full of action and (sometimes unintentional) humor: the “harem” in the movie is full of blondes and redheads in full 1950s false eyelashes and makeup. And keep an eye out for some great character actors in small roles—namely Jack Elam, Michael Ansara, Merry Anders, and others. But the picture also returns us to a time in history when the major studios pooled their talent both behind and in front of the camera, to churn out these wonderfully cheesy yet somehow lovely programmers. It’s just too bad they have yet to find their way to DVD.

Article by Dana Jung

Ah, the 1980s. Big hair, flashy clothes, and that new TV channel that only shows music videos. Exploitation films too were changing. Gone were the EXCORSIST- and OMEN-inspired horror films of the 70s. Biker movies were passe. And socially relevant nurse and teacher dramas were being replaced by teen comedies and a new type of scary movie: the slasher film. In 1985, New World Pictures released OUT OF CONTROL, a somewhat strange combination of LORD OF THE FLIES and a John Hughes movie that is harder to classify. In some ways the perfect drive-in movie, OUT OF CONTROL contains violent action, teen romance, sex, nudity, and pop music. But there is an undercurrent of weirdness to the film that, intentional or not, implies some deeper meaning behind the exploitive aspects and makes it interesting to watch for its details. However, if you missed it at the drive-in or didn’t catch the 1980s New World Home Video VHS release, then you’re out of luck, because OUT OF CONTROL is NOT available on DVD.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Eight teenagers are celebrating prom night by taking a seaplane to a resort island owned by the wealthy family of one of the teens. A storm causes the plane to ditch near an uninhabited island, the pilot is killed, and before you can sayTHE BLUE LAGOON� (or even PARADISE), the teens must fend for themselves. The eight characters offer up a nice sampling of teenage archetypes. There’s the dweeby nerd who narrates the story, the (literal) prom king & queen, her virginal BFF, the quiet young innocent (male & female versions), the bad boy, and the punk rock goth chick. Fascinatingly, nearly all these characters go against type. Instead of being a whiny know-it-all, the nerd is likable and funny and, in one sequence, even brave and heroic. The prom king rich kid is the most insecure and emotionally unstable, and his relationship with the prom queen is tenuous at best. The punker shows a sensitive side (and is a fan of both James Dean and Errol Flynn!), while the bad boy is smart and resourceful, saving all their lives on a number of occasions. He also avoids opportunities to start trouble and is patient and loving with his girlfriend, who won’t give up her virginity to him “until the time is right” � (Note to girlfriend: Smarten up! This dude’s a keeper!)

The movie crams a lot of unusual elements into its lean 78 minute running time. To begin with, the film is bookended by a pre- and post-credits video diary narrated by the nerd (Andrew J. Lederer, who apparently wrote some of the movie without credit). His main motivation in life is getting laid, but he is funny and charming in his own Woody Allen-ish way, and has some of the film’s best lines. The goth chick, he says, is “punk, overly made-up, and rude..I had to have her” � When he searches the island for food with the bad boy, he tells him, “You know how sometimes someone asks you who you’d want to be on a desert island with? I never picked you.”� And the scene where he practically invents online dating is priceless. After the intro, the movie gets underway with what has to be a parody of every music video made up to that point. Or possibly the filmmakers just thought it would be cool and funny. The plane crash is an extended sequence that is rather harrowing and claustrophobic. During their first night on the island, the teens do what all teens would do on a deserted island: they get drunk and play spin the bottle! This long scene takes a sexy turn when the kissing turns into stripping, then a more serious tone when some drunken truths emerge. We also get smugglers with French (and other indeterminate) accents, a fairly graphic attempted rape, the four girls ganging up to beat one of the smugglers, a running gun battle, and much more.

Mostly shot on location in what was then Yugoslavia, director Allan Holzman fills nearly every scene with movement, laughs, or tension. Holzman is something of a demi-god in the exploitation world, as he was a product of the Roger Corman factory of filmmakers. Prior to OUT OF CONTROL, he created such classics as CANDY STRIPE NURSES, CRAZY MAMA, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, and FORBIDDEN WORLD. After OOC, he became an award-winning director of more serious fare in television and documentaries.

Holzman was blessed by a young & talented cast on OUT OF CONTROL. Martin Hewitt, in a virtual replay of his role in ENDLESS LOVE, has little to do but mope and look the part of a rich snob. Jim Youngs (the bad boy) is familiar as Lori Singer’s boyfriend in FOOTLOOSE (where he played a real bad boy) but also had roles in such 80s flicks as THE WANDERERS, YOUNGBLOOD, and NOBODY’S FOOL before turning to TV and B-movies, then disappearing in the 90s. Claudia Udy (BFF) was a favorite of 80s exploitation (SAVAGE DAWN, NIGHTFORCE, DRAGONARD) before she also quit in the 90s. Sherilyn Fenn (who gets an ‘Introducing’� credit here) was only 19 years old when OUT OF CONTROL was shot, and is almost unrecognizable from the cult idol she would become a few years later in TVs TWIN PEAKS, to say nothing of a long and steady film career.

The real star of OUT OF CONTROL is Betsy Russell, who was already an exploitation queen due to roles in PRIVATE SCHOOL, AVENGING ANGEL, and TOMBOY. Starting out with small roles in television, Russell soon moved to B-movies, where she lit up the screen with a one-two punch: a cuteness-meter reading that was off the scale, and a willingness to go topless. With her auburn hair, dark eyes, and light sprinkling of freckles, Russell was a true drive-in dream girl. She continued to appear in B-movies (the slasher satire CHEERLEADER CAMP, CAMP FEAR, DELTA HEAT) well into the 90s. Like many actresses, however, she quit and took a 10-year hiatus to raise a family, appearing in only one small independent film from the mid-90s to 2006. That year, and still as attractive as ever, she made a very nice comeback in the horror film SAW III, portraying the ex-wife of Jigsaw. She has continued in this role with SAW IV through VI and will appear in SAW 3D, which opens later this month. She has completed a few other films and is hopefully continuing her career with other roles in the future.

When watching OUT OF CONTROL, one can’t help but notice the coming of age subtext in its small flourishes. The prom night attire for the king and queen looks more like a bridal gown (complete with veil) and white groom’s tux. In a moment of solitude, the Fenn character tries on a more adult undergarment that one of the other girls has discarded. The plane crash has an almost surrealistic quality that makes what follows seem almost dreamlike at times, especially since the film never shows how they got on the island. “I think I died and went to heaven”� says one character, while one of the smugglers refers to the place as the “isle of lost souls”� There are also nice visual references to other films, such as JAWS, TOM JONES, and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID. In one scene, Russell plants her feet and aims a pistol in a nearly exact replica of her poster art for AVENGING ANGEL. The musical score by Hawk and the Brothers Johnson has a decidedly 80s electronic vibe, but there are also songs by Steve Porcaro & David Paich of the 80s supergroup Toto, and the Quincy Jones-produced ‘There’s No Easy Wa’� by James Ingram was a top 10 Adult Contemporary hit. It’s just too bad that to see the love scene that accompanies this song, you’ll have to wait for this unique movie to appear on DVD!

Article by Dana Jung

In 1970, the Vietnam War had already dragged on for nearly a decade. Filmmakers, like society in general, were making their opinions about the war known. The great anti-war films M*A*S*H and CATCH 22 were released that year and, though not set in Vietnam, made bold satirical use of past wars to make their points. However, that same year brought us another anti-war film somewhat overshadowed by those two classics, HORNET’S NEST, starring none other than Rock Hudson. Like some surrealistic cross between John Wayne’s THE COWBOYS and the original INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (both of which it predated), HORNET’S NEST is notable for several reasons: it was the final Hollywood film of European screen star Sylva Koscina, it was one of director Phil Karlson’s last movies, and it was the film debut of Hudson’s trademark mustache! However, it is NOT notable for being on DVD.

The film begins near the end of World War II with a prologue showing Nazis murdering men, women, and children in a small Italian village. Some of the older kids escape and witness the mass executions from the cover of forested hillsides that surround the village. The little town is strategically located between several military targets, such as a tunnel, a dam, a railway, etc. so the Nazis set up a command center nearby. Soon after the massacre, an American commando unit parachutes into the vicinity, only to be intercepted and killed by the Germans. But one unconscious soldier (Hudson) survives and is rescued by the kids. Hiding him in a nearby cave, the youngsters then lure an attractive German field surgeon (Koscina) into the woods to nurse the GI back to health. When the soldier wakes up, he wants to complete his mission of destroying the dam. The kids want to learn how to shoot the automatic weapons they have stolen so they can get revenge on the Nazis in the village. The doctor just wants to survive, and maybe save a few of the younger kids. Meanwhile, the German officers drink champaign and try to decide which military target the commandos were after. Conflicts abound in HORNET’S NEST. The never-named Soldier fights with the doctor (who tries to kill him at one point) and with Aldo (an intense Mark Calleano), the leader of the kids. Aldo not only has raging teen hormones to deal with, but has become a bit unbalanced in his single-minded pursuit of vengeance against the Nazis (he regards the doctor as just another Nazi). The white-haired German Army captain in command of the town (but not responsible for the massacre) argues with his commanders, and in particular detests an evil SS major.

Director Phil Karlson presents all this in a lean, Spaghetti-western style, complete with distinctive echoing gunshot sounds and a nice musical score by Ennio Morricone. Punctuated by scenes of sometimes brutal violence, the story sails along to its explosive conclusion. The film contains themes of rape, child violence, loss of innocence, death, patriotism, and more. Leaders murder their own men. Kids turn into killers. War brings out the worst in humanity, and is even more damaging to the young. Although somewhat humorless and heavyhanded at times, several scenes hit home. In an effort to force the doctor to treat the Soldier, Aldo screams, “She’ll fix him, but maybe first we gotta fix her!” � Training the kids to shoot, Hudson tells them, “This is not a toy..it kills”� and they respond with laughter. Later, to underscore the message, when Hudson holds a mortally wounded child in his arms, the child says simply, “Soldier, it hurts”� and dies. Karlson was a veteran director who started in the 1940s and helmed everything from Charlie Chan mysteries to B Westerns to an Elvis movie. He also directed two of the Dean Martin Matt Helm flicks, including the best of the series, THE SILENCERS. HORNET’S NEST was not his first war movie, as 10 years earlier he directed the excellent HELL TO ETERNITY. After NEST, he shot only three more features, but two of those are certified cult classics, BEN (1972) and WALKING TALL (1973).

The full-faced beauty Sylva Koscina was not Italian, though she made most of her movies there, but was Yugoslavian (now Croatia), born in Zagreb. Though she first came to fame in America in a pair of Hercules movies with Steve Reeves, Koscina actually had an extraordinary career of over 100 films. At the height of her Hollywood popularity, she played opposite such stars as Paul Newman, Yul Brynner, Kirk Douglas, Dirk Bogarde, and Stewart Granger. She also worked with Fellini and many other Italian directors. Often difficult to cast because of her youthful face and statuesque 5′ 11”� frame, she was nonetheless a gifted actress who could play anything from farce to the heavier drama in HORNET’S NEST. I always though she would have been a perfect Bond girl (check her out as an assassin in DEADLIER THAN THE MALE), but either they didn’t ask or (more likely) she wasn’t interested. Her role in NEST as the oddly humanistic German doctor is somewhat underwritten, and for the latter half of the film she has little to do. (In fairness, her near catatonia in some scenes is actually part of the story.) However, the scene where she tearfully becomes a machine-gun-toting avenger is hard to forget.

Hudson at age 45 is tough and introspective in HORNET’S NEST, quite the flipside of his matinee idol image to that point. You have to laugh when he calls the kids “little bastards”,� but Hudson’s Soldier is a somewhat bitter man whose feelings of futility and remorse at the situation fate has put him in continually cross his face. Physically impressive in the action sequences, but understated and laconic in the dramatic scenes, this is one of Hudson’s best performances. With this film, Hudson had definitely turned a corner in his career, as his next projects continued with the darker fare PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW and EMBRYO. However, within a few years he had resigned himself to television, disaster films, and other ensemble pieces. A unique film in many ways, the tag line for HORNET’S NEST read “When they get hurt they cry! When they get mad they kill!”� Unfortunately, they only get hurt and get mad on the MGM/UA Home Video release from 1993, and not on DVD

Article by Dana Jung

The 1970s was a time of many cinematic styles and fads, and one of the most entertaining phases of the era was the Hitchcock-inspired movie. Through the popular writings of people such as Francois Truffaut and Richard Shickel in the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock had rightfully and rather suddenly been elevated from mere shockmeister to Master Artist of the Cinema. Either intentionally or by cinematic osmosis, Hitchcock’s style became the fashion of the day throughout the 70s. From low budget exploitation such as WICKED, WICKED (covered in a previous Not Available on DVD), to arguably its peak in the work of Brian De Palma (SISTERS and especially OBSESSION), several filmmakers basically ripped off one of the greatest directors in history throughout the 70s. Long camera tracking/dolly shots, first person perspective, and rapid editing started showing up in loads of films, even non-thrillers. But by the end of the 70s, the fad had succumbed to comedy and self-parody in works such as FOUL PLAY and Mel Brook’s HIGH ANXIETY. However, in 1979 Roy Scheider closed out the decade in one of the best Hitchcock homages, the little-seen LAST EMBRACE, which so far is NOT available on DVD.

Scheider plays Harry Hannan, an agent for some shadowy, never-named government agency. The film begins with a dream-like sequence (the first of many long tracking shots) set in a restaurant. Harry and his pretty wife are having a romantic dinner when some seedy-looking men show up, seemingly recognize Harry, and start shooting, killing Harry’s wife. Cut to several months later, and Harry is checking out of the sanitarium where he has (mostly) recovered from a nervous breakdown after the death of his wife. It’s established here early on that Harry is still a damaged man, getting tremors in moments of anxiety. “Think of the mind as a weave, Harry, a fabric”� his kindly doctor advises him, “Some of your threads happened to get a bit over-stretched. We don’t want to put too much pressure on the thin spots.” Harry doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to get stretched very thin indeed.

Director Jonathan Demme emphasizes Harry’s (and our) paranoia quickly, when Harry believes he is attacked at a train station (look for a very young Mandy Patinkin in this scene). His boss at the agency (Christopher Walken, menacing even wearing glasses) doesn’t seem happy to see him back. He finds his apartment has been sublet to a talky grad student (Janet Margolin), whom he’s sure is either a spy or an assassin. And his dead wife’s brother (Charles Napier) is following him, apparently blaming Harry for her death. Add to all this a hidden gun, a Jewish private detective, a vaguely threatening college professor (John Glover), and a mysterious note written in ancient Hebrew referencing the ‘avenger of blood’� and all the elements are in place for a Hitchcockian mystery.

Demme purposefully uses many of Hitch’s most assured techniques to build suspense slowly through the film’s first half. There is liberal use of red herrings, tracking shots, and the first-person perspective–not only from Harry, but other characters as well. During a murder sequence, the camera never leaves the face of the killer while the brutal death takes place. The film’s climax at Niagara Falls recalls other spectacular backdrops in Hitch’s SABOTEUR and NORTH BY NORTHWEST. In perhaps the most suspenseful scene in the film, Harry roams the deserted courtyard of a small college. Using a silent soundtrack with no music, the scene eerily recalls the cropduster sequence in N by NW, but inverts the wide open spaces to a claustrophobic area common to most schools. Surrounded by the walls of academia, Harry is shown from a bird’s-eye view, alone and isolated. Death can find us anywhere, even among these hallowed halls.

Scheider, in one of his best performances, belies his tough guy persona to portray a truly broken man. The scene where he wakes from a nightmare and recounts the details of his wife’s death is both hypnotic and sad. After the film is over, we wonder how the events we have witnessed will affect this man, the sure sign of a compelling portrayal. Even though LAST EMBRACE created buzz at the time for its rather overt sexuality and Hitchcock themes, it under-performed at the box office. But it was a good year for Scheider as he would get an Oscar nomination, not for EMBRACE, but for ALL THAT JAZZ, which opened some months later. Playing the college prof with a few secrets, John Glover made a career of creating smarmy, intelligent villains, which perfectly suited his signature role as Lionel Luthor (father of Lex) in 100 plus episodes of TV’s SMALLVILLE.

Janet Margolin was an attractive, dark-haired actress who created a big splash as a teen with the glorified art film DAVID AND LISA in 1962. She was on the fast track for Hollywood stardom with roles in big studio productions like THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, MORITURI (with Marlon Brando), NEVADA SMITH (with Steve McQueen), and others. But with the end of the 1960s also came, inexplicably, the end of Margolin’s film career. She turned to roles in television throughout the 1970s (I have fond memories of her as Harper Smythe in Gene Roddenberry’s PLANET EARTH), usually playing either troubled women or to her forte for comedy. In LAST EMBRACE, she again displays the fresh, luminous quality that allows her to convincingly portray a college grad student while in her mid-30′s. A native New Yorker, Margolin also has the whole annoying native New Yorker� persona down pat. Here, in her last real starring role, Margolin’s nuanced performance is both sexy and real. When she tells Harry, “Sometimes I think I’m quite depraved,” the mind boggles! Sadly, after EMBRACE, Margolin’s career consisted of ever smaller roles in TV and film, such as a minor part in ANNIE HALL for her friend Woody Allen. Only 14 years after heating up the screen in LAST EMBRACE, Margolin died of cancer at age 50.

Demme is a quirky director known as much for music documentaries such as STOP MAKING SENSE as he is for thrillers. While LAST EMRACE does not quite live up to the sum of its derivative parts, Demme used the Hitchcock influence to better effect later in the underrated SOMETHING WILD (1986), and the Oscar-winning SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. In both of these later films, Demme shows that it’s not necessary to stylistically emulate Hitchcock, but just to use the same principles of storytelling that made Hitch the Master of Suspense. LAST EMBRACE is a satisfying cinematic experience for the sexy performances, the visual stylings, and to look for all the Hitchcock homages. The lush musical score by Miklos Rozsa evokes the psychological mystery of SPELLBOUND. There are visual references to DIAL M FOR MURDER, VERTIGO, PSYCHO, and THE BIRDS. I’m sure there are many more, and part of the fun in watching the movie is looking for these in-jokes from Demme, but for now you’ll have to look for them on the MGM/UA Home Video VHS or Widescreen Laserdisc released in the 1990s, and not on DVD.

Article by Dana Jung

Decades before there was ‘J-Lo’� or ‘LiLo’, we had ‘La Lollo’,� one of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace movie screens, Gina Lollobrigida. Along with Sophia Loren, Elsa Martinelli, Monica Vitti, and others during the new wave� of Italian and European cinema, she gained fame as an international sex star in the 1950′s and 60s in low-budget Italian films with racy titles such as FAST & SEXY and GO NAKED IN THE WORLD. But when Loren won her Oscar for TWO WOMEN, Lollobrigida was already 35 years old, way beyond starlet status. In 1968 (ironically the same year her compatriot actresses Claudia Cardinale & Luciana Paluzzi respectively starred in the cult classics ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and THE GREEN SLIME), Gina made probably her best Hollywood film, BUONA SERA, MRS. CAMPBELL, which is sadly not available on DVD.

A pleasant mash-up of Hollywood screwball comedy and Italian sex farce, MRS. CAMPBELL tells the story of an Italian single mother (Lollobrigida) who has never left the small village she grew up in. For nearly 20 years she has given her daughter (a luminous Janet Margolin) the best things in life. A private education for her child, a nice home, even a small business have all made Mrs. Campbell well-liked and respected in town (though she still can’t get the acknowledgment she craves from an aging Contessa). However, Mrs. Campbell has a secret – a big one. When she was a teenager, the town was used to house U.S forces from a nearby air base at the end of WWII and she was romanced by several soldiers. After the soldiers left, she found she was pregnant, and started writing letters. So her current wealth is actually the product of money sent faithfully every month by not just one, but three of the ex-soldiers, each believing he is the girl’s father! When a military reunion comes to town to celebrate the past, Mrs. Campbell’s world is turned upside down, and the laughs begin. (If this sounds at all familiar, the basic plot was lifted to become the hugely popular stage musical MAMMA MIA, and Meryl Streep took on the Lollobrigida role in the film version.)

The film’s sharp opening sequence sets up the plot, as we intercut between Mrs. Campbell’s retelling of events to her housekeeper (delightfully played by veteran character actress Naomi Stevens) and the arrivals of the three ex-lovers at the airport. Amusingly contrasting Mrs. Campbell’s somewhat fuzzy but fond memories with the reality of what sort of men the three have become, the scene ends with the housekeeper asking incredulously, “And you still don’t know the father of your child”�, “Of course I know him!”� answers a petulant Gina, “I just don’t know who he is!”�

The film benefits from its large and talented cast. The three clueless ex-soldiers are played by TV veteran Phil Silvers, the suave Peter Lawford, and the iconic Telly Savalas. Their wives, all of whom have substantial roles, are also played by Hollywood veterans: Oscar-winner Shelly Winters is Silver’s well-meaning spouse, playing the harried mother role that she perfected later in her career. Another Oscar-winner, Lee Grant is amusing as a tough Jersey girl married to the even tougher Savalas. And the icy beauty Marian Moses (AKA Marian McCargo) is a perfect match for Lawford.

Seasoned comedy writer/director Melvin Frank (COURT JESTER, LIL ABNER, A TOUCH OF CLASS, Hope/Crosby road pictures) directs with flair, moving his cast through the story like a master chess player, and utilizing the wonderful Italian scenery as backdrop to the humor. In one of the film’s most entertaining sequences, all three men visit Mrs. Campbell in an afternoon full of near misses and funny moments. And the car chase at the end of the film wisely avoids Keystone Cops-style slapstick, instead focusing on the humor inherent in the awkwardly hilarious situation. Frank’s experienced writing and direction show he understood very well that humor is best when it comes from depth of character and the warmth of human relationships, observing how people can be very funny when they think they are doing the right thing.

Filmed on location in Italy and released by United Artists, MRS. CAMPBELL was a modest critical and financial success. Lollobrigida and the film were both nominated for Golden Globe Awards, and Lo Lollo gives a pitch perfect performance. She creates a character whose emotions swing from desperation to slapstick, from a stubborn temper to a loving mother all the while looking stunningly gorgeous in a series of chic 1960s outfits. Often compared to Sophia Loren with her dark hair, dark eyes, and luscious curves, Gina was much more than a second fiddle to Loren. She sizzled onscreen, heating up everything she was in, from overblown Biblical epics (SOLOMON AND SHEBA) to overstuffed Hollywood fluff (TRAPEZE). One of my earliest movie memories as a kid was catching Gina in a late-night telecast of WHERE THE HOT WIND BLOWS; her sultry sexiness scorched both my small black & white TV and my young brain!

Margolin was a pretty and gifted actress who played opposite the likes of Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, and Woody Allen early in her career. Often projecting a demure vulnerability onscreen, in MRS. CAMPBELL Margolin is a girl on the verge of womanhood, and learning some harsh realities–the scene where she finds out the truth almost breaks your heart. For the remainder of her career, Margolin acted mostly in TV roles but did star in one excellent film: the underrated LAST EMBRACE (and the subject of a future NOT AVAILABLE ON DVD). Stevens, who made a career of playing maids and mothers, had one of the best double takes in the business and it’s on full display here. Silvers was the Emmy-winning star of two different early TV shows bearing his name (the most famous as Sgt. Bilko), and excelled at playing nervous types, though later he was sometimes cast in villainous roles. The handsome Lawford was more famous as a member of both the Rat Pack and the Kennedy clan than as an actor, but here acquits himself well. Winters nearly steals the movie with yet another in a long list of great character parts, hilariously butchering the Italian language (“Scuza mia!”�). Grant, usually cast as the shrewish wife, was actually a performer of great depth; her career was just beginning to peak and over the next several years, she was nominated for multiple Emmy awards and three Oscars, winning for SHAMPOO. And Savalas, who had a long career in action films playing everything from James Bond villain to heroic detective (his Emmy-winning KOJAK), here, in one of his few comedies, makes the most of it. He sheds his heavier roles for a more lighthearted portrayal, but one with real substance (his dance with Margolin is one of the film’s highlights). And it’s his heartfelt relationship with Grant that gives the movie some of its emotional gravity, along with some of its funniest moments–I laughed every time she called him “fatso”� As a bonus, Savalas even says, “Ciao, baby!”

Unfortunately, after MRS. CAMPBELL, Lollobrigida worked less onscreen, devoting more time to her first loves, art and photography. She became a published photo-journalist and was one of the few people to actually interview Fidel Castro! After beginning her Hollywood acting career promisingly with roles in John Huston’s spoof BEAT THE DEVIL and as a fiery Esmerelda in HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, the roles floundered and the promise went unfulfilled. Partly because Hollywood never capitalized on her innate sexiness and instead wasted her in lame romantic comedies with the likes of Rock Hudson and David Niven, partly because she was born half a dozen years too early to take full advantage of ingenue roles in the 60′s, and partly because she never took her career seriously since she admitted becoming an actress by accident,Gina never achieved that iconic role that defined her career. The closest thing we have is the vision of a breathtaking 40-year-old international beauty and sex symbol in BUONA SERA, MRS. CAMPBELL, which was released on VHS in the 1980s by MGM Home Video, then again in the 1990s as part of their Vintage Classics series (along with a Widescreen Laserdisc), but so far is missing on DVD.

Bigfoot (aka: Sasquatch), the elusive North American apeman whose alleged sightings sparked a craze that swept the nation in the 1970′s, inspired a string of cheap movies that were rushed into theatres then to cash in on the fad. THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK (1972), SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974), CURSE OF BIGFOOT (1976) SASQUATCH, THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1977) all made a quick buck and who can forget the ‘Bigfoot and Wildboy’ TV series and the Bigfoot episode of ‘The Six Million Dolar Man’� (and c’mon, tell me Chewbacca wasn’t inspired by the big hairy guy as well) but none were as gloriously goofy as the low-rent 1970 campfest BIGFOOT. A low-budget quickie loaded with Indians,� biker gangs, redneck cops, and a whole family of clumsy bigfeet, BIGFOOT is about ten times more entertaining than it has any right to be, but it is NOT available on DVD.

BIGFOOT opens with Joi Lansing as a sexy blonde pilot crash-landing her small plane in the mountains, then promptly removing her flight suit to reveal skimpy lingerie underneath. Bigfoot’s wandering by, spots her bouncing through the woods, so grabs her and ties her to a nearby tree where she spends most of the rest of the film. Meanwhile the film’s hero Rick (Christopher Mitchum) and his girlfriend Chris (Judy Jordan) are riding with a gang of unwashed bikers. They wander off from the group to make out, discover a Sasquatch burial ground, and are attacked by the hairy beast who soon has two busty babes tied to trees (I guess Bigfoot learned how to tie knots in Boy Scouts). The Bigfoot family consists of one mean male, three females, and one goofy-looking baby (there’s reference to Bigfoot wanting human women for breeding purposes – the poster’s tagline is “Breeds with anything!” – so this toddler must be some kind of human/bigfoot mongrel) Rick can’t convince the local redneck sheriff of his story, but a pair of elderly traveling salesmen (John Mitchum and John Carradine) believe him and figure if they can capture Bigfoot, they’ll get rich. Rick, the bikers, the old coots, and a bear descend on the Bigfoot family camp for the action-packed climax.

For a Z-grade schlock horror of this type, BIGFOOT provides a good deal of amusement along the way. It’s a hopeless train wreck but the lunacy is piled high and it’s a whole lot of fun if viewed with the right attitude. Director Robert Slatzer’s only previous feature was the shoddy biker film THE HELLCATS in 1967 (ultimately MST3K fodder), He does a decent enough job moving the film along at a good clip but not fast enough to cover the to the rock-bottom production values. The wobbly sets look like they are made of paper mache and the shaggy Bigfoot costumes looks like they were made from ratty brown rugs and plastic fright teeth. Slatzer shoots endless dizzying filler of the bikers riding back and forth on their unintimidating mid-size Yamahas (a Yamaha dealership is listed in the opening credits! – and watch for Haji, who appeared in six Russ Meyer films including FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL in these riding scenes, though she has no lines). BIGFOOT is populated with colorful characters and a great B-movie cast. John Carradine, who spent the 70′s co-starring in tons of dreck like this, has the best lines, ridiculously paraphrasing KING KONG with “It was beauty did him in” and “Ah…Beauty and the Beast!” Ken Maynard was a popular western star in the 1930′s and in BIGFOOT he’s plays the owner of a diner who has vintage Ken Maynard movie posters tacked on his wall. Robert Mitchum’s son Chris inherited his father’s sleepy eyes but it just makes him look half asleep as he woodenly plays the unconvincing biker hero (and his uncle John is one of the old salesmen). Lindsay Crosby, who plays the leader of the biker gang, was the son of Bing Crosby and performed music with his three brothers, known as “The Crosby Boys” in the 1950′s. Crosby committed suicide in 1989 (as did one of his brothers a couple of years later). Joi Lansing was a stunning, shapely blonde who had been a popular model, appearing in many men’s magazines in the 50′s and 60′s, and was romantically linked to Frank Sinatra. She had played the dancer who dies at the end of the famous first tracking shot in Orson Welle’s TOUCH OF EVIL in 1958. She mostly worked in television and it’s her participation that gives BIGFOOT some cult status but sadly it was her final film as she died of breast cancer before it was released. I can remember seeing TV commercials for BIGFOOT as a kid and thought it looked exciting but never caught up with it until I saw a nice 16mm print screened at a Cinema Wasteland Convention a couple of years ago. It was released briefly in the early 80′s on VHS but, as of this writing is still MIA on DVD.

For better or worse, 3-D is here to stay but what of the one-shot movie gimmicks of yesteryear? HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) had �Emergo�, a glow-in-the-dark skeleton that swooped over the audience at a key point in the movie. EARTHQUAKE had �Sensurround�, massive Cerwin-Vega subwoofers that shook the theatres and for POLYESTER (1981), John Waters passed out self-explanatory �Odorama� cards. �Duo-Vision� was a split-screen technique used for the entire 1973 shocker WICKED, WICKED, a film as forgotten as it�s gimmick and one that is NOT available on DVD. Split-screen is an effective story-telling device when used sparingly. Brian DePalma used it quite a bit in SISTERS (also 1973) and in many of his other films.It was used intelligently in WOODSTOCK (1970) and THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1968) but way overused in MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1979). WICKED, WICKED, where the device is used in 99% of the shots (only a couple of violent inserts and establishing shots are full frame) has an underserved bad reputation as a film where the gimmick was the only memorable thing about it. I recently caught up with WICKED, WICKED and was surprised to find a more than capable shocker with a gimmick that was absolutely integral to the story it was telling.

WICKED, WICKED opens with a warning reading: �You are about to see a new concept in motion picture technique�.DUO-VISION. In this process you will witness simultaneous action through the use of a double screen�an experience that will challenge your imagination�. WICKED, WICKED is the story of a knife-wielding maniac (Randolph Roberts) in a fright mask named Jason (!) who kills women in the sprawling resort hotel where he works as the handyman (filmed at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, where parts of SOME LIKE IT HOT were shot) in retaliation for being sexually abused as a child by his foster mother. Jason targets beautiful blondes and spies on them with binoculars before the attack. Jason’s hides out in a specific room that�s hidden within the hotel�s walls (shades of BAD RONALD) which gives him easy access to roam the hallways. A security agent (David Bailey) leads the investigation into the murders and when his brunette ex-wife (Tiffany Bolling) arrives at the hotel to sing, he makes her bleach her hair to act as a decoy and a cat-and-mouse between killer and detective begins.

WICKED, WICKED dispenses with any mystery as Jason yanks off his fright mask and shows his face after the second murder so, despite the introduction of some colorful red herrings, there’s no attempt to building any suspense about the identity of the masked psycho. What makes the film work is its gimmick, the ‘Duo-Vision’, and the film makes the most of this technique�s visual possibilities. The split screen often shows Jason on ones side and his victims on the other.� Sometimes flashbacks to his traumatic childhood are shown, or actions at opposite ends of a hallway or building are illustrated. This all makes WICKED, WICKED a real masterpiece of (pre-digital) editing. The two images interact inventively and they play off each other in �ways that well advances the narrative. Director Richard Bare and his hardworking editor give the viewer twice as much information as a standard movie telling in effect, two stories at once. It�s impressive how they manage to sustain it for the entire 93 minute running time, even though it appears Bare inserts shots a creepy woman playing the organ to use as filler when needed.� It�s a clever gimmick that draws the viewer in as a voyeur in the grisly proceedings and I�m surprised it hasn�t been used for a complete feature again (or maybe it has?)

‘Wicked, Wicked … that’s the ticket…’ the theme song is performed no less than three times by the film�s star Tiffany Bolling who released an album of songs that year titled ‘Tiffany’. Her singing career never panned out but Bolling, a tanned and sexy stunner, will always be remembered for starring in a pair of� sleazy drive-in classics that same year. In BONNIES KIDS she and Robin Matson played sisters on the run after gunning down their perv stepdad and THE CANDY SNATCHERS was a nasty, nihilistic kidnap drama inspired by THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Both of these films been released on DVD� in special editions recently, but WICKED,WICKED remains MIA. It’s never been available in any format although Turner Classic Movies reportedly has aired it. Bring back ‘Duo-Vision’!

Astronaut Steve West is the only survivor of a disastrous space-mission and carrier of a horrible disease that makes him radioactive and …. his body is liquefying on him! William Sachs’ THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN screenplay is a schlock riff on the 1955 Hammer film THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (aka THE CREEPING UNKNOWN) that doesn’t waste much time with explanations or lead-up as it opens with stock footage of solar flares followed by West having a nasty nosebleed in outer space. Steve wakes up in a hospital and, in shock after seeing his face in the mirror, busts out, leaving a trail of sticky pus and fallen off body parts behind. A pair of Geiger counter-toting scientists follow his trail of moldy flesh and half-eaten corpses (they find a chunk of flesh stuck to a tree and proclaim “Oh god!…. it’s his ear!”). They claim that Steve “gets stronger as he melts” which doesn’t make a lick of sense if his appendages are sloughing off (yet he never loses overall body mass – this is obviously the type of movie that if you spend too much time contemplating its many stupidities, you’ll miss out on all the fun). When these two, who have spent the entire film on goo man’s trail, finally confront him near the end, one says to the other “What do we do now?”( I guess weapons – or an organized manhunt – slipped their minds). There’s a flashback late in the film where they replay the entire opening sequence so we get to see that dramatic nose bleed again and for the climax I guess the filmmakers couldn’t figure out what to do with the Incredible Melting Man except have him melt some more, so that’s exactly what he does. He just sort of sits down and finally liquefies, wicked witch-style, into a messy puddle, which a janitor promptly sweeps up (but I thought he was “getting stronger as he melts!?!”).

THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN is crap, but it’s fun crap and I can remember being amused by it several times at drive-ins in the late 70′s. The movie was marketed around the film’s real star, make-up effects artist Rick Baker (who had worked on STAR WARS the same year and would go on to win several Oscars). Baker has an enormous amount of (pre-CGI) fun creating revolting faces with liquefying eyeballs and ears and teeth exposed beneath melted lips. The movie gets a great deal of mileage out of its gooey effects and the money shot is a decapitated head tumbling down a waterfall and crashing watermelon-style on the rocks below. THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN received a lot of publicity in 1977, scoring a cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland and an article in the kids mag Dynamite The strangest back story concerning THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN is that Baker in fact created many more gruesome prosthetics that were never used in the final film. Apparently the actor playing the title creature refused to wear some of these bloody. And who could blame him really, after all he was played by that 70′s icon Alex Rebak (!!!..not to be confused with Jeopardy‘s Alex Trebek, who he kinda looks like). It seems astonishing today that Baker went to the trouble and expense to create these effects (and I’ve seen photos of these props in Cinefantastique magazine they’re cool!) and the final film was compromised by the diva-esque behavior of its lead. Why on earth they didn’t just get a stuntman to wear the goriest devices instead is one of the great movie mysteries (the story may be a myth, but it’s something I’ve read for years). Rebak was a nobody actor from soap operas whose career melted after this film and the only other recognizable name in THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN is 70′s drive-in fave Rainbeaux Smith who’s topless in a brief scene (though look closely for mustached director Jonathan Demme in a surprise cameo). THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN was roasted by the MST3K guys and released a couple of times in the 80′s on VHS including part of MGM’s Midnight Movie series but he has yet to show his drippy face on DVD. I will be screening an 18 minute condensed version of THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN on Super-8 sound film on the evening of July 6th as part of my SUPER-8 CHARLES BRONSON MOVIE MADNESS night so stop by the Way Out Club (2525 Jefferson Ave. in south St. Louis) on the 6th starting at 8:00 for some gooey fun.

In Charles Bronson news, two of his westerns, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, made this weeks list of Top Ten Westerns here at WAMG, but there’s an outstanding western that Bronson costarred in very early in his career worthy of discussion that most readers are probably unfamiliar with. DRUM BEAT from 1953 starred Alan Ladd and was based on a true story about a violent Indian uprising in the 187os. It’s an impressive and exciting outdoor adventure but Hollywood studios were churning out hundreds of westerns in the early 50′s so it’s not too surprising that DRUM BEAT, though so superior to many, hasn’t received its due. The most notable thing about DRUM BEAT is that it provided Charles Bronson with his real break-through role as an actor. Bronson’s scene-stealing performance as an Indian chief received a lot of attention and paved the way for his long and successful career, but DRUM BEAT is NOT available on DVD.

DRUM BEAT was based on a little-known occurrence in 1873 where (for the only time) an American Army General was killed during the wars against the Indians. The Modoc tribe, lead by their chief, Captain Jack (Charles Bronson) is moved from their reservation in California to one in Oregon to share with the Klamath, a tribe with which they have a long-standing feud. General Edward Canby (Warner Anderson), a highly-decorated Civil War vet, attempts to negotiate a peace treaty between the warring tribes but is murdered by Captain Jack. Johnny MacKay (Alan Ladd), a civilian scout and Indian fighter, is hired by President Grant (Hayden Rorke) to find Captain Jack and bring him to justice for the murder. MacKay makes a side trip to escort a damsel-in-distress (Audrey Dalton) home after her uncle is killed by the Modocs, then tracks down Captain Jack and DRUM BEAT climaxes as the two battle in hand-to-hand combat on a rocky mountainside and into the sweeping current of a river.

DRUM BEAT was filmed in Northern Arizona’s Coconino National Forest and the skirmishes between the retreating Indians, perched atop looming, un-approachable cliffs, and the pursuing cavalry out to avenge the killing of their general make are exciting. DRUM BEAT was one of the earlier films to show Indian life in an authentic way instead portraying them simply as bloodthirsty savages. Captain Jack is indeed ruthless and barbaric (and looks cool wearing the blue army coat with its medals that he steals off a murdered army colonel) but he’s also presented as proud and magnificent, fighting in all sincerity to retain the lands his ancestors had ruled for centuries. Writer and Director Delmer Daves had spent much of his youth living on reservations with Hopi and Navajo Indians and his westerns such as BROKEN ARROW (1950) and WHITE FEATHER (1955 ) were notable for their sympathetic portrayals of Indians. Many of the extras in DRUM BEAT were played by native Indians (though the leads are played by white actors and the Modoc language is, like the Indian languages in most westerns, rendered into a sort of poetic English) and it’s nice to see an older film with a balanced portrayal of Indians without going to the politically correct extremes necessary in the westerns of today.

After the enormous success of SHANE a year earlier, Alan Ladd formed his own production company, Jaguar Productions. DRUM BEAT was its first film and it was given a healthy budget with outstanding color cinemascope location photography by J. Peverell Marley, an unusual musical score by Victor Young, and a strong supporting cast. Elisha Cook, Jr. is appropriately squirrelly as the shady trader who sells Winchesters to the Modocs and Marisa Pavan is memorable as an ill-fated Modoc squaw who falls in love with Mr. Ladd. DRUM BEAT was an Alan Ladd Western but the actor who made the biggest impression was Charles Bronson and the critics singled out his performance. The ‘New York Times’ noted “Charles Bronson is probably the most muscular Indian ever to have brandished a rifle before a camera” and Peter Baker wrote in ‘Films and Filming’: “(Alan Ladd’s) performance is dwarfed by that of Charles Bronson as Captain Jack”. Prior to DRUM BEAT Bronson had performed under his birth name, Charles Buchinsky, but his agent worried that sounded too Russian (Bronson’s parents were Lithuanian immigrants) during the entertainment industry’s blacklisting of Communist associates and was looking to change it. Legend has it they were discussing possible new names while driving on Bronson Avenue in L.A., looked up at the “Bronson Gate” sign at Paramount Studios, and a star was rechristened. It’s startling how menacing Bronson’s Captain Jack seems watching DRUM BEAT today. I think part of it is that he looks so much bigger than Alan Ladd. Bronson was not a tall man at 5′ 8″ but Alan Ladd was four inches shorter than that so Bronson seemed to tower over him, something he did not to his costars later in his career. In the 1970′s, after Bronson had become a global superstar, DRUM BEAT was reissued in some countries under the title CAPTAIN JACK with Bronson’s name on top. Bronson’s role in DRUM BEAT was central and he dominated the film, but he was neither shown nor mentioned on the film’s poster or ad campaign. In his book ‘The Films of Charles Bronson’ author Jerry Vermilye theorizes this may have been due to jealousy; “One imagines that perhaps executive producer Alan Ladd did not fully appreciate Bronson’s scene-stealing talents or the generous amount of close-ups allowed his thespian adversary by the movie’s suitably impressed director”(Bronson did show up on the wonderful cover of the Dell Comic-Book tie-in). DRUM BEAT is a very tough movie to track down and hasn’t played on cable in many years. It was released very briefly on VHS on the Magnetic Video label way back in 1979 (!) but I’ve been collecting Bronson movies for decades and have never been able to locate a copy (but I still have my VHS I taped off channel 11 in the mid-80’s). Hopefully DRUM BEAT will be released on DVD soon but until it does, I have good news for St. Louis area Charles Bronson fans. I host a monthly film festival at a nightclub here called Super-8 Movie Madness where I screen condensed version of movies on Super-8 sound film on a big screen. Tuesday, July 6 will be a special theme show called Super-8 Charles Bronson Movie Madness and among the seven Charles Bronson films I am showing that night is an edited version (runs about 18 minutes) of DRUM BEAT (the six other Bronson movies showing are MASTER OF THE WORLD, THE DIRTY DOZEN, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, BREAKOUT, HARD TIMES, and LOVE AND BULLETS) so head down to the Way Out Club at 2525 Jefferson Ave. in St. Louis July 6 beginning at 8pm and come face-to-face with Captain Jack!

The 1976 film MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH was a political allegory mounted as T&A exploitation and disguised as a teen slasher flick, but despite its well-deserved reputation as a cult classic, it’s NOT available on DVD. After opening with a deceptively drippy song (“You’re at the crossroads of your life…”) MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH kicks into teen angst overdrive by creating a somewhat exaggerated fantasy of a high school notable for its complete absence of teachers, adult supervision, rules or even classes.

Promising young athlete David (Derrel Maury) moves to a new neighborhood and enrolls at the local high school. His old friend Mark (Andrew Stevens) is a student there and introduces him to his three sadistic friends who rule the school through bullying and intimidation. David declines the invitation to join the Nazi-wannabes and soon stops them from raping a girl (Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith). They take revenge by kicking out the jack holding up the car that David is repairing, breaking his leg. David gets even by arranging a series of accidents, which result in the death of all three. The rest of the school celebrates their liberation from the oppressors but soon begin to exert the same power as the dead bullies. Now mentally unstable, David goes into action again, this time with a bomb.

With its theme of the abused becoming the abusers, MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH was ahead of its time and a forerunner to REVENGE OF THE NERDS (if the nerd’s revenge involved bloody carnage), the Columbine High massacre, and especially HEATHERS (the explosive finales are near identical). MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH is an odd, offbeat film with a dreamy but cheerless atmosphere: there are no teachers around, the cops never seem to investigate the deaths – they only pop up right at the end for the dramatic climax – and none of the students are ever seen in class. It’s the type of politically incorrect 70′s film that wants the audience to feel outrage at a rape scene, but doesn’t hesitate to use that scene for some gratuitous nudity.

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH was the first film written and directed by Rene Daalder, who had been a cameraman for Russ Meyer, and 34 years down the line, MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH still has teeth. It inspires thought and has the ability to shock but some of the direction seems off and the acting’s awkward, which adds to the overall strange atmosphere but it’s not surprising that Daalder wouldn’t direct again for ten years. Darrel Maury was a gangly actor who worked mostly in TV including a stint on an Archie show playing, unsurprisingly, Jughead. Andrew Stevens, son of Stella, would star in Brian DePalma’s THE FURY two years later and has had a long career in mostly direct-to-video leads. Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith is an actress very familiar to fans of 70′s exploitation and has a considerable cult following. Smith had starred in LEMORA LADY DRACULA in 1972 at age 17 and adorned drive-in screens throughout the decade in films like CAGED HEAT (1974), SWINGING CHEERLEADERS (1974), and the title role in the adult version of CINDERELLA in 1977. Smith was a sexy and charismatic presence but had a weakness for heroin and died destitute at age 45. Also in the cast are Robert Carradine (as Spoony) and Lani O’Grady, who would go on to play the oldest Bradford on the TV series Eight is Enough.

A flop on it’s initial release, MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH (the first movie to use the word “Massacre” in it’s title after THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) was the victim of a misleading advertising campaign (and title) that promised a psycho/slasher flick and not the civics lesson it delivered. I first saw MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH when it played frequently on cable in the early 80′s (it’s high nudity quotient made it ripe for the late-night Cinemax), but apart from some early VHS release, it disappeared soon after. It warranted a chapter in Danny Peary’s seminal Cult Movies book and has always had its following. Though MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH may have a message about the way we treat each other, not only in high school but also in the world, it’s still a 70′s exploitation film and the message is an excuse to enjoy the art of killing without getting caught in the crossfire, and that’s revenge most sweet. MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH deserves rediscovery.

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932), the first adaption of H.G.Well’s 1896 novel ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau’, was one several shocking horror films from the early 30’s that helped advance the enforcement of the ‘Hays Code’, Hollywood’s self-censoring rules deeming “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it”. It wasn’t ISLAND OF LOST SOULS’s radical scenes of horror (like FREAKS) or the deviant sexuality (like the Frederick March version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR HYDE) that offended but its allegory premise that Man could play God and create Man through surgery by splicing together the flesh of various living animals (….and I’m sure the hints of bestiality didn’t help). ISLAND OF LOST SOULS is a movie that hasn’t lost its power to shock and disturb almost 80 years later, but it’s one that is NOT available on DVD.

In ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, shipwrecked traveler Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is rescued from his lifeboat by a freighter shipping supplies to an isolated South Seas island overseen by Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) who welcomes Parker to his island. Parker soon discovers that Moreau is conducting vivisection experiments in order to transform animals into humans. Parker finds that Lota (Kathleen Burke), the native girl that Moreau is trying to push him toward, is actually a transformed panther and that Moreau wants to keep him there to conduct an experiment in mating her with a human. The hybrid animal men (lead by Bela Lugosi as ‘The Sayer of the Law’) revolt and drag Moreau to his comeuppance in his own ‘House of Pain’.

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS was one of only very few adaptations of his work that H.G. Wells saw within his lifetime and he was vocally unhappy with the film which was banned in his native Britain (ostensibly for its portrayal of cruelty to animals). He considered the film’s overt horror a misrepresentation of the philosophy of his novel, which he claimed was an indictment of the morality of modern science. ISLAND OF LOST SOULS is mostly faithful to Wells story, thanks to an intelligent script by Philip Wylie who also adapted Wells THE INVISIBLE MAN for director James Whale the same year and the film’s most famous line “What is the law…Are we not men” has become horror folklore.  ISLAND OF LOST SOULS was not at all popular when initially distributed in theaters and was out of circulation for decades but it was never forgotten. Thanks in part to Forry Ackerman’s ‘Famous Monsters of Filmland’ magazine and make-up artist Wally Westmore’s creations that resemble a grotesque middle ground between humans and animals, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS has always been a favorite among horror movie fans.

Charles Laughton, 33 when he starred in ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, was a British actor who had gained fame playing Nero the year before in Cecil B. DeMille’s THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. With his goatee, pit helmet, and whip, he more resembles a plantation owner than a dedicated but misguided mad scientist whose medical research would make Joseph Mengele blush. Laughton’s Moreau is a man who appears reasonable on the outside but who has spent his career doing unspeakable things for no practical purpose and Laughton, who would win an Oscar the next year for THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII, delivers a demented characterization that elevates ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. Bela Lugosi was still hot after his triumph in DRACULA the year before and is great as the leader of the animal men. Kathleen Burke, who beat out thousands of young women in a nationwide search to play the Panther Woman, winning the role because of her “feline” look, wears costumes that are shockingly skimpy and her nipples are clearly visible in several shots. Billed on the posters simply as “The Panther Woman”, Burke went on to a brief but insignificant career. Future stars Buster Crabbe, Alan Ladd, and Randolph Scott have uncredited bit parts in ISLAND OF LOST SOULS.

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS has been remade but never improved. The 1978 version with Burt Lancaster as Moreau and Michael York as Parker was lifeless. John Frankenheimer’s bizarre 1996 version with Marlon Brando as Moreau was considered a disaster upon its release but is not without its gonzo charms (both remakes were titled ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU and made Moreau a post-DNA genetic engineer rather than a surgeon). TERROR IS A MAN (1959) and THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE (1973 with Pam Grier as the Panther Woman!) were both Philippines-shot riffs on the Wells novel, but it’s the 1932 version that makes the most of the material. For years now ISLAND OF LOST SOULS has been DVD’s most glaring omission from the Golden Age of Horror. Produced by Paramount, it’s never looked good and I suspect its absence on DVD may be due to an unavailability of acceptable elements. The long-ago releases on VHS and laserdisc (double-billed with 1933’s MURDERS AT THE ZOO, another pre-code shocker from Paramount) were the same foggy and soft prints that Turner Classic Movies occasionally runs. ISLAND OF LOST SOULS is one of the best horror films of its era and deserves proper restoration.

Director William Girdler�s 1974 film ABBY was a clone of THE EXORCIST with an all-black cast starring William Marshall, fresh off his triumph as BLACULA, in the Max Von Sydow role. Shot for a meager $200k, ABBY was an urban hit, grossing four million dollars in its first month of release. Apparently the powers-that-be at Warner Brothers, who had produced THE EXORCIST, thought ABBY�s plot was too similar to that of their cash cow so successfully sued Girdler and the films distributor, American International. AIP was ordered to destroy all of their theatrical prints, and the film has never officially been licensed for home viewing. THE EXORCIST was the top grossing film of 1973 and spawned a virtual cottage industry of knock-off imitators, mostly from Europe, that flourished for the rest of the decade, so it seems an odd fate that ABBY was singled out for legal punishment and remains to this day unavailable on DVD.

ABBY tells the story of Abby Williams (Carol Speed), a 30ish Christian marriage counselor who lives with her minister husband Emmett (Terry Carter) and religious mother (Juanita Moore) in Louisville, Kentucky. Her father-in-law Garnet (William Marshall) is on an archaeological dig in Africa when he unearths the remains of a Hellish demon named Eshu whose sprit is transferred to Abby’s body back in the U.S. Abby�s first symptoms of demonic possession are obscenely drooling into her bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, cutting her arm with a kitchen knife, and screaming dementedly during her husband’s sermon. Soon she’s sexually insatiable, bellowing all types of obscenities in a low baritone voice, and puking nasty-colored bile. Garnet returns from Africa after a desperate phone call from his son leading to the expected good-vs-evil showdown climaxing in a nightclub exorcism highlighted by an exploding disco-ball.

ABBY plays much more like a standard horror film with black elements than a Blaxploitation horror film. ABBY differs from most Blaxploitation films of the period with its lack of street violence and urban setting and its authentic portrait of suburban black middle class (no pimps, but lots of big afro’s and wacka-wacka guitar!). ABBY has an undeservedly bad reputation and even made it into the Medved Brother�s �Golden Turkey Awards� book as a nominee for �Worst Blaxploitation� movie. It is cheesy and cheap, but that’s part of its charm. ABBY doesn�t take it self too seriously, director Girdler moves things along at a brisk clip, and it�s a funky, unpretentious good time. ABBY was produced to cash in on the coattails of THE EXORCIST but it�s tamer with no head-spinning or crosses to the crotch, and while there�s plenty of talk and screaming about sex, the only nudity is in silhouette and ABBY is not nearly as sexual titillating as most EXORCIST knock-offs (which all upped the age of the possessed from Linda Blair�s 13 to play up the sex angle).

William Girdler was the accomplished and prolific Kentucky-based Producer/Director/Writer of several memorable drive-in gems beginning with the nasty THREE ON A MEATHOOK in 1972. His incendiary 1974 thriller THE ZEBRA KILLER, about white man who dresses in black makeup before raping and killing young women, is also MIA on DVD. GRIZZLY (1976) was a hugely successful JAWS rip-off and DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977) was a well-made entry in the �nature�s revenge� cycle. Girdler�s jaw-dropping THE MANITOU (1978) had a tumorous Indian shaman growing out Susan Strasberg’s back and SHEBA BABY (1975), his only other stab at Blaxploitation, was a great showcase for Pam Grier. All of these low-budget films were made with great skill and Girdler would no doubt have been destined for more fame had his career not been cut short in 1979 when he died at age 30 in a helicopter crash while scouting locations. William Marshall was a 6�5� Shakespearean trained actor who worked on Broadway and in opera and was known for his rich bass voice. With his commanding presence, Marshall, best known for playing the title role in BLACULA (1972), lends ABBY more gravitas than it deserves. Marshall would go on to play the King of Cartoons on �Pee Wee�s Playhouse� in the 80�s and died in 2003. Carol Speed achieved some cult status starring in a handful of Blaxploitation films including THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972) and THE MACK (1975). Speed, who left show-biz after the 70�s, is quite over-the-top in ABBY especially in the crazy scene where she suffers a foul-mouthed demonic seizure while counseling a square-looking young couple

Blaxploitation collided with the horror genre several times during it�s early-70�s heyday most iconically with BLACULA (and it�s sequel SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM in 1973). Romeroesque zombies were featured in SUGAR HILL (�And Her Army of Zombie Hit Men�- 1974) and J.D.�s REVENGE was about a brother possessed by a dead gangster. There was also DR. BLACK AND MR. HYDE (1976), BLACKENSTEIN (1973), and THE BLUMMY (okay, I made that last one up). GANJA AND HESS, THE BEAST MUST DIE, THE THING WITH TWO HEADS and ALABAMA�S GHOST could also be considered examples of this cross-genre. ABBY was filmed under the title THE BLAXORCIST and it did copy the trick from THE EXORCIST of placing single frames of demon-possessed faces and other ‘subliminal’ images, but it�s a mystery to me why Warner Bros got so bent out of shape about ABBY and none of the dozens of other EXORCIST copies from this period (THE TEMPTER, THE SEXORCIST, BEYOND THE DOOR, HOUSE OF EXORCISM, THE ANTICHRIST, Paul Naschy�s EXORISMO, etc). Perhaps Warner Brothers was bothered by the relative success of ABBY or maybe it was easier to litigate a U.S. distributor than a European one or maybe it was� racism!!! (where�s Al Sharpton when you need him!?!) Though theatrical prints were destroyed, ABBY is not a �lost� film. I saw a 16mm screening at a Cinema Wasteland show a couple of years ago and a ratty16mm print was used for an unlicensed DVD put out by the CineFear label that is now out of print. The original elements are in a lab somewhere and deserve, like the demon Eshu, to be exhumed as ABBY is solid 70�s entertainment.

�NOT available on DVD� column since it began nine months ago and I realize that 19 of the previous 24 films I�ve written about are from the decade of the 1970�s. It�s not that there aren�t worthy forgotten films of the 50�s, 60�s or 80�s that have yet to see life in digital format, it�s just that, being born in 1961, it was the �70�s when I came of age and I�ve always had a fixation with the many films I saw at the drive-in in the last half of that decade. Besides, only from the politically incorrect �70�s could have come a disco musical comedy about a woman with a talking vagina.

CHATTERBOX, made in 1977, is no porn film (though bare breasts abound), but a silly R-Rated comedy based on a ridiculous but titillating situation that today doesn�t seem at all sleazy or dirty but really funny and kind of innocent. It�s basically a one-joke premise, but it�s a unique premise and CHATTERBOX manages to sustain itself for a breezy 73 minutes without the joke wearing too thin.

Filmed under the title LIPS (yeah I�m glad they changed the title too), CHATTERBOX tells the story of innocent hairdresser Penny Pittman (Candice Rialson) who�s in bed with her boyfriend one night when she�s surprised to hear a voice from her loins critiquing his sexual performance. She visits her gynecologist, Dr. Pearl (Larry Gelman) in the hopes that he can help get her muff to shut up, but Dr. Pearl has a better idea. He becomes her agent and takes Penny and her showtune-belting cervix, cleverly named Virginia, on the road to celebrity. Penny and Virginia appear as guests on Professor Irwin Corey’s TV show where Virginia sings a funky disco tune called �Wang Dang Doodle� which rockets her to stardom. Penny has sex with a baseball team after Virginia sings the national anthem and they co-star in a musical porno film surrounded by dancing men dressed up as singing chickens!

A send-up of porno films (such as DEEP THROAT), CHATTERBOX is light-years away from being a great movie, but for a low-budget 70�s time-waster, it�s a lot of fun. The humor is raunchy but goodhearted and the double entendres fly fast and furious even though not many of the jokes really work (not surprising considering how big Rip Taylor�s role is) but the film really comes to life during the bizarre musical numbers. CHATTERBOX often has an awkward and cut-rate feeling to it (the boom mike makes several cameos), but with panache, copious nudity, and a dollop of charm, the brash satire manages to pull it off. Despite its premise this is probably the most wholesome, inoffensive movie ever set against the backdrop of vocal genitalia (and would make a great double feature with the 1988 talking penis movie ME AND HIM).

Director Tom DeSimone had mostly worked in the adult film industry in the years leading up to CHATTERBOX under the moniker Lancer Brooks. He would go onto to direct the cult films HELL NIGHT (1981 with Linda Blair) and REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS (1984 with Wendy O. Williams). His direction of CHATTERBOX is mostly lackluster and rushed but surprisingly lively during the film�s montages and musical numbers (the catchy songs, including �Cock-a-Doodle-Doo�, were penned by Neil Sedaka!).

Though the voice of Virginia is curiously uncredited, DeSimone assembled a fun �70�s cast. Irwin Corey was a groundbreaking improv comedian who liked to bill himself as ‘The World’s Foremost Authority’, and Rip Taylor was a loud TV funnyman known for his effeminate high-voiced shouting, toothy grin and handlebar mustache. These two old-school comics give CHATTERBOX a burlesque-style, �Laugh-In� vibe that dates the film nostalgically. But the real success of CHATTERBOX was casting the right actress in the lead who was a good enough sport to work with material where her vagina is the focal point of the story. A blonde stunner with a sexy smile and come-hither blue eyes, Candice Rialson was a B-movie starlet who lit up drive-in movie screens with appearances in exploitation films such as PETS, SUMMER SCHOOL TEACHERS, MAMA�S DIRTY GIRLS, and CANDY STRIPE NURSES, (all in1974). She also had a few parts in mainstream movies, most notably as a student who has �I Love You� written on her eyelids as she flirts with her professor, played by Clint Eastwood, in THE EIGER SANCTION (a gag stolen outright for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK). In 1975 Rialson appeared in Mel Brooks SILENT MOVIE and had a small part in LOGAN�S RUN. Rialson was sexy as a natural, girl-next-door, Ann-Margaret sort, and never came off as sleazy despite the roles she took. Her biggest film was Joe Dante�s 1977 satire HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD in which she starred as starlet Candy Hope and that film is proof that she deserved much more of a career than she ever received. An excellent actress and natural comedienne, Rialson was never shy about taking off her clothes and became so notorious for her B-movie work that mainstream directors were hesitant to hire her, other than to play small roles like the “second blonde girl” in her last film, John Huston�s 1979 thriller WINTER KILLS (Quentin Tarantino was such an admirer of Rialson�s work that he based Melanie Ralston, the character played by Bridget Fonda in JACKIE BROWN, on her). By the end of the decade, Rialson had vanished from the big screen and many assumed she had become another tragic Hollywood casualty, but �Femme Fatales� magazine tracked her down in 1993 and it was revealed that Candice had simply left show biz to become a wife and mother, though sadly she died of cancer in 2006 at age 54 (though Irwin Corey�s still kicking at 96!). The glory that was Candice Rialson deserves to be rediscovered but most of her movies are MIA on DVD. CANDY STRIPE NURSES and HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD were released on New Concorde�s �Roger Corman Classics� label, but are now out-of-print. I highly recommend Code Red�s new DVD of Rialson�s first film PETS, an odd mix of murder, sex and bondage that�s perhaps her showcase film.

CHATTERBOX was released on VHS on the Vestron Video label in the mid-80�s as well as on the short-lived CED Video Disc format and I hope that it, and more Candice Rialson, will someday find its way to DVD.